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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24449314">Time and Space</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin'>kaeorin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Loki's Lullabies [65]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Avenger Loki (Marvel), Comfort, F/M, Healing, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Protective Tony Stark, Reader-Insert, Trauma</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 10:21:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,952</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24449314</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>You're hired onto the team as a lab-assistant-slash-babysitter for Tony Stark. It's not the best place to deal with trying to heal, but it's a place, anyway. And then you catch someone's eye... (There's no depictions of assault in here, but the reader is a survivor of sexual assault so please skip this one if that might trigger you.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Loki (Marvel)/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Loki's Lullabies [65]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>324</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Time and Space</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>An anonymous reader requested something with a character who had survived sexual assault. That’s...a topic in this one. There are <b>no flashbacks</b> or depictions of anything like that, just a reader who’s trying to adjust to the world again. This is the first lullaby I’ve written where I’m already thinking about a “sequel”. This is the very very early stages of your relationship with Loki; I’d like to use this same reader again in another lullaby with a more established relationship. So...just a heads up. Obviously I can’t possibly know everyone’s stories or what each of you needs, but I hope that, if you read this, it gives you what you need.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You never meant to let it run your life. It was hellish and nightmarish and left you damaged, sure, but you were too proud to let it break you. Life went on. You dealt with the nightmares. You dealt with the flashbacks. You dealt with the strange panic attacks on those rare occasions when you overheard a group of friends throwing the term around to laughingly describe how they’d decimated someone in a game the night before. They didn’t know how it had rung through your head that night as you struggled to wrap your mind around the pain and the disbelief that it was happening to you.</p><p>As much as you didn’t want to let it dictate what you did or avoided, you didn’t quite like being alone with a man. It didn’t really matter which man or how well you knew him: your palms would always get sweaty and your legs would stiffen and your mind started conjuring all kinds of ridiculous worst-case scenarios and trying to figure out how to escape from each of them. </p><p>But your stubbornness—and your spite—made you apply for the Stark position anyway. You’d heard plenty about Tony Stark. He was a playboy, a rogue, sure, but also brilliant. There were rumors that Pepper Potts had tamed him a bit, and the job came with a huge pay increase compared to your current bottom-rung lab assistant position. Somehow you made it through the interviews, and you must have made it through the background checks, because soon he was moving you into the giant Tower in the middle of the city.</p><p>Your job was mostly babysitting. Ms. Potts had pulled you aside on your first day (you were extremely proud of the way you hadn’t flinched at all when she’d touched you unexpectedly) and explained that Tony could overdo it sometimes. She explained that sometimes he needed someone to get him to sit down for a minute and breathe, because otherwise he’d work himself to death. Wincing a little, she’d explained that that was your main priority here. He wanted—no, needed—an assistant, sure, but she needed him to listen to someone once in a while. </p><p>The nasty voice in the back of your mind tried to remind you that you couldn’t get men to stop doing anything, but you’d forced a smile and nodded at her.</p><p>Your first few days in the lab were kind of a blur. You were in an enclosed space—a <i>large</i> enclosed space, but enclosed nonetheless—with a strange man. He generally kept a good distance from you, only looming too close behind you when he was checking on something you’d been working on or excitedly explaining his vision, but each unexpected sound made you flinch. He must have tested you a lot during those first days, checking to see if you could really hold your own in his lab, but you’d torn through his puzzles and challenges like they were nothing just because you were so desperate not to think about where you were. </p><p>You must have passed his tests, because you kept your job. Once he was apparently satisfied, he threw himself back into his own projects and more or less forgot about you entirely. It was a quiet job, and kind of lonely most of the time, but it was an incredible opportunity to be turned loose in this lab, with all its access to materials that you’d barely even been able to dream of.</p><p>The Avengers came through the lab sometimes, too. Mr. Barnes frequently perched on the edge of a table while Tony tinkered with the hardware or software of his arm, or fitted him for a new one entirely. It felt silly to be so much more comfortable with two strange men—they were nearly all men—in the room, but it was still comforting. You tried not to stare at anyone. You had work to do. This wasn’t an Avengers Zoo—it was an incredibly state-of-the-art scientific lab. Sometimes you felt their eyes on you, but you never looked up at them. Steve Rogers, Captain America himself, introduced himself to you one day, standing a little closer than you would have liked and extending his hand into your overly-large personal bubble, and Jesus Christ he was Large. Thick arms, broad shoulders, towering above you. You’d swallowed the lump in your throat, forced a smile, and let him absolutely dwarf your hand in his. Maybe you choked out your name, or maybe it just came out as a squeak. It was hard to know.</p><p>When he left, Tony turned his attention onto you with a grin. “Does someone have a crush?” he asked knowingly. He didn’t know anything. You shook your head vigorously and tried to steady your breathing. Your hands were shaking too hard to actually work with any of the things on your desk in front of you, but you looked down at them anyway and pretended.</p><p>“No, absolutely not. I just...” You were just stupid. Or ridiculous. You clenched your hands into fists a few times, willing them to function like they were supposed to. It felt like Tony’s eyes were taking you in, analyzing your behavior. You should have just lied and said that it was a crush. “He startled me.” Your heartbeat was racing in a sickeningly familiar way. Apologetically, you excused yourself to the restroom and locked yourself in a stall so you could ride out the panic in private.</p><p>When you got back, Tony looked at you a little too long with a little too much understanding in his eyes.</p><p>It was hard to miss the way he started steering the Avengers away from your desk when they came down. In a sharp voice, he’d tell them that under no circumstances were they to distract you from your work. You were <i>his</i> lab rat, after all, and you had too much work to do to spend the day chatting with any of them. Most of the time, you weren’t really doing anything of especially great importance, but that sick, fearful part of you was grateful to him anyway.</p><p>One day, frigging <i>Thor</i> showed up. From what you gathered, he was helping Tony figure out some kind of shield-weapon combo, something that could absorb huge amounts of energy and then unleash them in a more controlled blast over time. He spent many afternoons conjuring huge blasts of lightning, lighting the room like a strobe light from hell or something. You kept an ear out for the signs that Tony needed a break and tried to figure out exactly how you’d try to make the two of them stop when Thor could create lightning like it was nothing. Things mostly went well, though, so you didn’t need to step in.</p><p>One day, Thor did not come in alone. You recognized Loki from the news. The Avengers must have hired some kind of PR team for him or something, because his face was showing up in the background of more and more positive-press pieces. They were trying to show the city—or the world—that he wasn’t who he was the first time his face had been plastered across the news. He was tall and lithe and moved with a regal elegance. It was harder not to stare at him than it was for any of the others. You watched out of the corner of your eye as he slunk along behind his brother. He stood near the two of them and offered his own thoughts here and there, his voice low and musical amidst the other noises in the lab.  You let yourself listen to it as you worked, and found that you liked it.</p><p>Once, you heard Tony’s sharp voice again, heard him repeating his demands that the men leave you alone. It made you look up before you could stop yourself—by now, everyone else on the team knew the drill—and you saw Loki looking at you with something unreadable in his expression. When Tony reiterated that Loki was not to bother you, his voice sounded even sharper than before. Loki didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t respond. Or you didn’t hear his response, anyway.</p><p>He started accompanying Thor to the lab a little more often, though. Most of the time, he continued to stand on the sidelines and offer suggestions even though Tony and Thor ignored them most of the time. That made you feel a little sick. It was stupid to equate <i>that</i> with what had happened to you, but it still didn’t feel good to hear it. Men pretending not to hear something that mattered? That was uncomfortably common.</p><p>Each day, it played out more or less the same. Loki would come down. He’d stand with them for a while, telling them things that rarely got acknowledged, and then he’d come and sit on the bench in front of your desk to watch them. His proximity put you on edge at first. He wasn’t as close as Steve had been that first time, but it felt a little more permanent. But his back was to you, and it was clear that he was watching Tony and Thor. There was little to no proof that he was paying you any attention at all. Gradually, your fingers stopped trembling and you got to the point where you could keep working like nothing was out of place even when Loki was close enough that you could reach out and touch his shoulder.</p><p>The first afternoon that he spoke to you, he turned his head only slightly. You could see the way one corner of his mouth curled up, but he wasn’t looking at you. “I make you nervous.” It wasn’t a question. Your cheeks grew warm but you kept most of your attention focused on the plans in front of you.</p><p>“A little.” You picked up a screwdriver, but only to turn it over in your hands. Realization struck you, then, and you looked up quickly. “Er—but not because of...you know.” The Battle of New York. He’d looked ragged and hollow on the photographs that flashed across the screen even as the news anchors described a tyrant. You’d always suspected that there was more to <i>that</i> story. “It’s just...men. Men make me nervous.” Even that felt like you were saying too much. You pressed your lips together and continued to tinker with your work. </p><p>Maybe the challenge piqued his interest. He started coming down more often, even after Thor and Tony finished their project. He would slide into the lab so quietly that you rarely noticed until he was sitting in front of you. You stopped getting startled when you saw him. He kept his back to you like he knew it made him less threatening, and sometimes turned his head a little to speak with you. When Tony tried to shoo him off, he did not budge. It made you find your voice.</p><p>“He’s not distracting me,” you assured Tony, and held up the work you’d nearly finished. He’d studied your face for several long moments, in a way that made you think he was checking for any lies in your expression, but then he’d nodded and walked away. He’d listened. He’d allowed you to tell him to back off, and he’d done it. Pride swelled in your chest and you’d gone back to work.</p><p>You sort of expected Loki to stop coming when Tony made that exception for him—he’d gotten around the rules, so now it wasn’t a challenge anymore—but he didn’t. If anything, he started joining you more often. He talked to you about your work. He was brilliant. Tony and Thor didn’t listen to him, but he had great ideas. He was a soundboard for you and let you talk through your whirling thoughts to come to a deeper understanding of what it was you were trying to do. Your work got even better. It was more streamlined and elegant. The first time Loki rose to his feet and came to stand next to you on your side of the desk, you were so caught up in what you were doing that your stomach didn’t clench with fear.</p><p>It was easy to work next to him. He left most of the tinkering to you, but he did start standing closer and closer while you did. He didn’t mind serving as a second pair of hands for you, and there were many times where he stepped in to help before you could figure out how to articulate your request. His constant presence in the lab seemed to forge things with Tony as well. Tony started asking questions of the both of you, started giving you both tasks to finish. He started listening to Loki more. <i>That</i> felt good to witness.</p><p>One night, you managed to convince Tony to go get some rest. He had been working on the same thing for three days straight, substituting Red Bull for sleep. So you did your job. Your heart was in your throat as you tried to reason with him, but you did it anyway. Somewhere between your attempts to remind him that an exhausted brain was a useless brain and that Ms. Potts would have your head if he fainted from exhaustion, he gave in and retreated. You knew that you needed to do the same, but you were <i>almost</i> finished, so you went back to your own desk to wrap things up.</p><p>You weren’t surprised when you dropped a part and Loki was already there handing it back to you. It was late, but he looked just as put-together as always. When you thanked him with a smile, he kept his eyes fixed on you. </p><p>“You’ve lovely eyes, did you know that?” You tried to laugh it off and go back to work, but he pressed ahead. “I mean it. I’ve never seen a mortal with eyes like yours.”</p><p>Your hands fluttered nervously in front of you before you pressed them firmly to the top of your desk. This was uncharted territory. By now, you were very very good at working beside Loki, but suddenly you realized that you were alone with him. “Eh...thank you.” You hated the way your body was stiffening right now. He was <i>not</i> the same as the last man you’d been near. This was not the same situation. </p><p>Maybe he picked up on your tension, because he moved back to the other side of the desk. You tried not to be too obvious when you let out your sigh of relief. He picked up one of the pieces you were working on and turned it over in his hands. “Why are you here so late? I know you’re here to look after Stark, but isn’t anyone looking after you?”</p><p>Your hyper-vigilance prickled, told you it was stupid to let him know that no one really cared about you. But it was your own fault. You’d pushed your friends away after It happened. It wasn’t on purpose, of course, but your life suddenly became very different from theirs, so you’d retreated. You drew one shoulder up in half a shrug and looked up to see if he could see it. He was looking intently at you. “I’m an adult,” you reminded him. “I’m looking after myself.” You left out the fact that you didn’t really have a choice. Maybe that didn’t matter.</p><p>He hummed in acknowledgment but then allowed you to work in silence for a while. It was like your heart was thudding in your ears. The atmosphere felt different around you. It wasn’t easygoing and simple like it was all the times that Loki came to talk shop. The tension made you fumble a few times, but each time his hand shot out to keep your work from dropping to the table.</p><p>“You’ve been mistreated,” he said after a long time. As it often did, his tone of voice made it clear that he wasn’t asking. Your mouth twisted into a wry smile. It sounded like such an understatement. He must have read your mind, because he tried again. “You’ve been hurt. Very badly.”</p><p>Your reflexive denial caught in your throat. It felt wrong to lie to him, so you kept your silence instead. He wasn’t asking, after all. The trembling in your fingers was enough to give you away, but you continued working as though it weren’t there.</p><p>“If you give me a name, I’ll take care of him for you.” He sounded sincere—and dangerous. You ignored the chill that ran down your spine. “I’ll do whatever you need.”</p><p>If you were braver, or less uncomfortable, now might have been the perfect time to spill it all. The horrors. The recovery. The attempts at reporting it. The numbing rage and frustration when nothing at all happened. Tonight, though, it was all you could do to draw in a steadying breath. “Could you—” A thousand thoughts whirled in your head. You took a moment to figure out exactly what you wanted from him. The answer surprised you, but you forced it out before you could change your mind. “Could we get a drink?”</p><p>His eyebrows shot up his forehead, but he nodded. When he stood up and offered you his hand, you hesitated, because of course you hesitated. He kept his distance, and when you looked up to study his face, there was only patience there. It looked strange on the face of Loki of Asgard, but it did not waver.</p><p>You put your hand in his. His skin was soft.</p><p>He smiled warmly and led you out.</p>
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